We just heard speculation for the millionth time that the Duchess of Sussex is unlikely to continue With Love, Meghan, her Netflix series focused on cooking, entertaining and crafting. Meghan has been saying as much for months, that her focus right now is on building As Ever, and there’s not enough time for WLM or her Confessions of a Female Founder podcast (boo on both counts). Well, the most recent story probably came out when it did because Team Meghan knew that Netflix was about to release their viewership numbers for the last half of 2025. WLM’s ratings are perfectly respectable for a lifestyle/cooking show, but of course they’re being compared to Netflix’s hit shows like Wednesday.
Netflix has released streaming data for the second half of 2025, including the ratings for Meghan Markle’s lifestyle series With Love, Meghan and the accompanying holiday special.
With Love, Meghan’s second season was the 1,224th most-watched program on Netflix between July and December 2025, according to the streamer’s Engagement Report for the second half of the year. The show notched 2 million views since its Aug. 26, 2025, release, with 9.7 million hours viewed.
The hour-long holiday special, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration, ranked 1,022nd. Released on Dec. 3, 2025, the special had 2.4 million views and 2.3 million hours viewed.
The first season of the Duchess of Sussex’s show ranked 3,203 with 600,000 viewers and 2.7 million hours viewed. It was released on March 4, 2025. During the first half of the year, it was ranked 383 with 5.3 million views.
The second season of Wednesday was the most-watched show on Netflix during the second half of the year, with 124 million views, according to the report. Stranger Things season five (94 million views), Untamed season one (93 million), Squid Game season three (79 million) and Stranger Things season one (57 million) rounded out the rest of the top five.
Although both seasons and the holiday special spent time in Netflix’s Global Top 10, a source told PEOPLE earlier on Tuesday, Jan. 20, that there are “currently no plans for a third season” of With Love, Meghan. However, the possibility of future specials or other one-off projects is still on the table.
Yeah, it is what it is. I’m sure Meghan’s haters and critics will gloat, but as I said, these numbers are perfectly respectable for similar programming. Netflix is probably happy because this was another experiment for them, to see if they could do lifestyle programming and whether people would watch. They went into it knowing that it would be niche programming, and it delivered. Plus, they’re invested in As Ever, so it’s win-win for them. (Also: what’s crazy to me is that WLM’s Season 2 was actually much better than Season 1!!)
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
So they’re comparing a lifestyle cooking show to Wednesday, Stranger Things and Squid Game? Are they going to say how is stacked up in viewer numbers compared to KPop Demon Hunter’s next? I legitimately do not understand this comparison when there are actual cooking and lifestyle shows that are on Netflix with famous people that they could compare it to if they want to imply that she’s not successful.
Why don’t they compare it to Nadiya from GBBO’s show? Or Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat or Dinner Time with David Chang? Do they think that because of who Meghan is people are going to tune in to a genre they may not care about inherently just because of who it is?
I get it from the British media because they are a bunch of haters, that’s why they never mentioned what Kate Carol concert gets in ratings, but I don’t understand it from the American soft media. It’s like they forget normal business stuff when it comes to Meghan. Like people getting head hunted and leaving to go to better paying jobs, niche shows performing in a certain bandwidth, and normal business filings have never occurred before.
Agreed about genre, but more
Importantly budget! One episode of scripted top tier content probably cost more than the entire season of Meghan’s show.
I love Meghan’s style and I think she and Harry are very sweet, but I couldn’t watch the full season 2 of WLM. I watched the first ep, but once she started talking about grabbing “whatever you have around the house” like beautiful strands of cranberries to use as gift-wrapping flair, I tapped out.
It’s a sweet, harmless, kinda-boring show that feels out of touch with all the shit going on elsewhere. If she was able to do something a little more relatable/attainable, like perhaps show ways to have her fashion style on a budget, or a show where she shows behind the scenes of building her As ever business, I’d be down.
Completely agree, Wordnerd. I’m team H&M through and through but the show didn’t feel very human or honest and I couldn’t relate to any of it unfortunately.
Oh here comes the I’m team H&M. But!But! I’ve always watched cooking and lifestyle shows so I really liked Meghan’s. Human or honest? I know what doesn’t feel human or honest and that’s dehumanizing a woman with a cooking show. Cooking and lifestyle shows were most popular during the Iraq and Afghanistan war and through the Great Recession. I side eye the it feels out of touch crowd when I loved them most as a broke college student because they’re aspirational. My aunt works as a teacher and has been registering voters since last year while volunteering at a food bank. Things she has always done. She bought a little wine and sat down and enjoyed the show. She’s 78 by the way and not rich. I cook maybe 10 new recipes a year and do 1 or 2 projects but still like watching. So I’m mostly just watching. She may like lifestyle shows that’s her generation. Stop telling a woman who she is and what she wants to do. If you don’t want to watch don’t watch. Do something to make this time better big or small. I’m watching what I can having giving up a few subscriptions. I have Netflix right now. So I’ll rewatch when I have time. I know it. That was long, but some of you only post to say out of touch. So the others are as well. I read but don’t post.
I agree with all of this. I think Meg in particular may be struggling with how much of herself to give us, completely understandably. This probably felt safe but safe risks being boring – perhaps she’s better suited as an executive producer where she doesn’t have be vulnerable.
Same. I think I also found it unrelatable and a bit out of touch considering the hellscape we’re living in the US. I really enjoyed the first season; it was escapism and I could enjoy seeing someone in a beautiful home and garden making good food, but by the time season 2 rolled around, the world had changed (at least in my view).
I think it’s up there with me watching shows like that now too. It just feels surreal. Most of the country is dealing with ICE barging into our neighborhoods, school, and abducting people. We have the SCOTUS who approved this mess. And now we are trying to force Denmark to give up Greenland and today I heard him talking about Iceland being the 52nd state. I hate it here. I just don’t want to watch cutesy stuff like this right now. And I don’t know. I liked season 1 much better. Season 2 was eh. And I skipped the holiday special.
For me, the appeal was that it offered an escape from our hellscape. I have friends I can relate to — but I look to shows like WLM for aspiration and inspiration.
i liked it for both comfort and escapism. the first season felt more attainable to me though than the second season – no I’m not binding my own books wtf lol. But I could make those bath salts.
but I think your level of enjoyment of it depends on your expectations and generally just what appeals to you. i enjoyed it, but I can understand why some might not have.
How do we know the numbers are comparable to other lifestyle shows? What were the rankings of other shows in the genre?
I downloaded the full list. Lifestyle/food type shows weren’t in the six categories they broke out but in my limited knowledge of the genre the top 5 performers were:
111. (overall) Is It Cake Halloween – 11.5 million views
165.: Is it Cake Holiday S2 – 9 m views
360: Is it Cake Holiday S1 – 5.5m views
364: Great British Baking Show Collection 13 – 5.4m views
708: Is it Cake Season 3 – 3.2 m views
Wow, people really like guessing if things are cake or not lol
The next highest was in the 860s, so I think it’s safe to say Meghan’s shows were in the Top 10 in her category, but generally that people don’t seek out that kind of programing at Netflix.
@Dutch: Even though cooking is involved those shows are in a different genre to Meghan’s show. Those are competitions are will get higher numbers that a straight lifestyle show.
Queer eye has to be higher than that.
They evidently didn’t put out a new Queer Eye season in 2025 so the most viewed season was from 2024 and it was in the low 3400s
There’s a huge file linked in the Netflix announcement. Netflix doesn’t have a lot of cooking/lifestyle shows. Season 1 of WLM topped all of them, but season 2 and the holiday show (which did better) were way behind Great British Baking Show, Is It Cake and Culinary Class Wars (a Korean cooking competition which is totally wild once you get into it). I think, in general, people like the competition aspect more than just watching somebody bake. But there were other shows that came behind WLM. Given the thousands and thousands of shows on Netflix, I don’t think they were particularly disappointed.
I love Great British Baking Show, and the junior edition and professional one too.
yeah I doubt they were disappointed. I’m sure Netflix spends enough on market research to know what to expect with most of their shows.
It was cute. I liked it. A good launching for asever. And good for her.
I agree. I will miss it and will continue to watch both seasons for as long as Netflix has it available.
I actually think season 2 was released too close to season one and there wasn’t enough difference to make some people tune in for the second instalment. Having said that I love the shows and I’m so happy Meghan made them! I look forward to the content she produces with As Ever.
The second season did a lot better than the first season, numbers wise.
I think those are good numbers for the type of programme it is. I’m hopeful that Meghan will do more specials.
The article lists the top five programs for the viewing period. It isn’t comparing those numbers with WLM.
Well, I have to say With Love Meghan has really and genuinely underperformed.
I expected it to be the first and one and only cooking show in the world to beat Wednesday, Stranger Things and Squid Game COMBINED!
Such a disappointment… and Meghan is such a loser… (massive eye roll)
This is pretty decent for the type of show, I enjoyed all of it and as I have collected lots of bits to actually do some of the crafts, will go back and rewatch it plenty! It’s a shame that as always, the bar is set much higher for anything Meghan does. Reality TV and big dramas are where the big views are. Nobody should expect a number 1 show. It’s more of a launching show for a brand. It’s marketing that she got paid for!
I don’t know if anyone saw Matt Damon talking about how they have to go over the plot in movies now because nobody is really following any more, they’re almost always on another screen at the same time. So lifestyle shows will find it harder to fight against the ‘I’m bored’ crowd whose attention span has reduced to 10 seconds. People can’t even read books any more because they can’t hold the plot that long!
WLM has a dual purpose: Other than being a lifestyle/cooking show, it helped launch her As ever brand and represents major exposure to a global audience. Don’t tell me Meghan doesn’t have excellent business sense. Not even the BM and People mag are so dense that they don’t realize this.
This was my view. Netflix is probably fine with two seasons and a holiday special, released closely together, performing where they did because they’re involved in As Ever and this was a very public launch for the brand. Now they can maybe do some specials geared around certain times of the year or significant product launches. Did they maybe hope for higher ratings? Sure, who doesn’t want the highest ratings possible? But it got a LOT of buzz and attention and that’s better. Some of the buzziest shows on tv aren’t the highest rated. Like Tracker on cbs has the highest tv ratings but people talk about shows like Severance.
I don’t see Netflix’s association with As Ever continuing since there is no show. I think at some point this quarter, an announcement will be made, and the wording of the announcement will have been carefully crafted by both parties working together on it.
I like that MS is a risk-taker, professionally. It’s something other women can be empowered by. Good for her for experimenting with a show like that and sharing her world and perspectives.